“Pudding” in Britannic parlance, are undercooked pastries.
Jeremy Clarkson is, in fact, a porcine in grotesque human form, as long evidenced by his behavior. As much as I jubilate the lampooning and satire of monarchy in all of its obtuse, reprobate, ultimately dispensable forms, and in particular the ‘British’ Royal Family which is pretty much three lies for the price of one and is most useful as the inspiration for some of Shakespeare’s most tiresome plays and Rowan Atkinson’s most overlooked work, Clarkson’s peculiarly targeted attacks speaks to his barely concealed bigotry and misogyny, and his implicit competition with Piers Morgan for the title of “Most Despised British Clown”. Hopefully this leads to Clarkson being marginalized to only be able to present on InfoWars or public access television in Las Cruces, NM. He’s a virus in human for. Fuck that guy.
This is the only relevant point when it comes to the (supposed) details of anything to do with the British monarchy. The tabloids will always ensure that only details favourable to their current “face” will be popularised and only details unfavourable to their current “heel” will be popularised. They write the story and anybody who believes any significant amount of it is a sap.
Clarkson plays a character on TV (and in his columns) and I have no idea how real it is - but given his influence it matters not. He’s an asshole. He took his schtick too far for even many of his own fans to stomach this time, and is paying the price.
It definitely crossed a line for me. I’m a big top gear fan (as mentioned previously on the dope I’d hold the best bits of top gear up as the only actually genuinely very funny thing to come from a conservative comic on either side of the Atlantic)
This goes beyond his usual curmudgeonly old reactionary tory dickhead schtick to actual misogyny, like the actual definition of the term, not just being sexist actually hating women (I’d actually suggest its also misogynoir, as personally I’d bet he would not have used such intense language about someone who wasn’t mixed race)
Probably but I don’t know how you know. I watched Top Gear a bit but only because I like James May. I am not - to put it mildly - a fan of Clarkson and have made no effort to get to know “the real him”, even assuming it exists as something separate to his TV persona.
I’ve never seen a serious interview with him. I’ve never seen him do anything except ham it up on entertainment shows. So you may well be completely right, I wouldn’t know.
As I said, even assuming he has more reasonable underlying views, at this point it matters not.
Let’s face it though this is all about trying to create some sort of fight so you can show off your holier than thou credentials, and brag about how much more anti8-racist and anti-sexist you are than everybody else, right?
On Top Gear, Clarkson was a buffoon, as a foil to the one urbane and one youthful co-hosts. He was amusing, but I believe his onscreen persona was not unlike his offscreen persona. I am also pretty sure that his buffoonery of pushing limits and pushing buttons was what made the show fun to watch.
But I was never a fan of him in particular, now even less so.
He embodies a similar role on Clarkson’s Farm. The show’s format has him repeatedly trying to outsmart his land and his crops, and almost always being defeated. His harebrained schemes are rarely portrayed as anything but completely idiotic, yet he keeps egotistically bulldozing ahead with them and being humiliated over and over. Obviously, there’s a conservative political message not-so-subtly embedded here (“honor the traditional farmer and his long-proven traditional ways!”), but it’s notable that he consciously makes himself the clown and the fool of the show as the means to delivering that message.
I’ve always known he was a distasteful prick in reality, but his willingness to show his pride being punctured on-camera made it easier to take, and to imagine he was inflating that aspect of his image for effect. This new column, though … this is way, way past the line, and I won’t be able to accept his paradoxical presentation any more.
The person that Clarkson takes the piss out of the most, is himself. He is useless at farming and admits it, he relies on (and praises to the high heavens) all the real agricultural experts that help him. It isn’t anything to do with traditional ways, more that getting food to the table is unbelievably difficult, completely opaque to the suburban masses and it is very hard to make a living from.
I’m from an agricultural background and his program has done far more to raise the profile of farming hardship than any cuddly, dainty “countryfile” style exposure has done in decades. He comes across as someone genuinely concerned for both nature and the rural economy and in awe of the people who make it work. This is a nice little interview with Caleb and Clarkson that gives a good background into the show.
The column is pretty much exactly the same as he’s been publishing for decades, no worse no better. Not sure why anyone is particularly surprised or shocked. Meghan is a divisive figure, he invokes a “game of thrones” reference and uses hyperbole in an attempt at humour. Not particularly funny but hardly a major issue. He thinks that he overstepped the mark and apologises. End of story for me. The only reason this is getting any traction is because of that divisive nature of Meghan.
In a similar incident, In a radio comedy show a UK comedian, Jo Brand, joked about throwing acid in the face of a politician she didn’t like (at a time when substances actually were being thrown at politicians) there was a minor kerfuffle, people calmed down and recognised it was a tasteless joke and the world moved on.
When I say something - twice - and you still manage to try to be holier than thou by piously pointing out (as if it’s a criticism of me) that same thing, then yes it is performative virtue signalling.
I thought when I first posted what I posted I was on slightly thin ice - only for you to prove my exact point in a manner far better than I ever could.
Edited to add: and not only that, one of the reasons I was careful to say what I said - twice - was because I knew you would be ready to pounce and try imply that - because I hadn’t said something explicitly - I must believe the opposite.
But you managed rather pathetically, to try to pounce anyway. Jeebus are you a fuckwit.
Translation - I tried to be preemptively clever, and it blew up in my face. So I’ll go all-in on the attack instead.
I pointed out what I pointed out to emphasise that “TV persona” is meaningless dribble for a reality TV person. That even allowing him the possibility of a thin veneer of an excuse is bullshit.
You came at me, mate, the fuckwittery is entirely on you. I wasn’t even replying to you initially, despite what Discourse seems to think.
I think that I first saw Jeremy Clarkson on TV back before FOX was a network and was just WNEW in NY.
It was before people knew that it was evil, but it was heading there. Back then, Howard Stern was on AM radio and being disgusting and racist was considered a ‘new’ way to get ratings.
If I remember correctly, he was an ‘in the street’ shock reporter who would walk up to random people and talk trash to their face in a British accent. He was something like 6 foot 5 and actually had muscle back then so few people would chance a swing on him… but he’d do things like walk up to a black mother whose children were playing in a park and make comments like,
“Madam, your children smell unwashed. Do you bathe them? Do you know what soap and water is? Do they have that in the country you’re from?”
The anchors would twitter and giggle and then they’d segway into a segment on this season’s hot toy or something.
Well, it’s more than 30 years later now and his muscles are now just man-boobs and flab. Maybe he misses knocking on doors and bullying whoever answers “for a laugh”.
I can’t say for sure, but I highly doubt that was Jeremy Clarkson - he was busy doing shows in the UK for the BBC at that time and wasn’t much known outside of that. I’m not saying he wouldn’t have been capable of that, but I think his bigotry has always been more of the “oops, that was more offensive than I intended” variety, as opposed to deliberate intent to hurt others - not that that excuses it, of course. And given it has been a repeating pattern over the course of many years, he really should know better by now - so he’s either stupid, uncaring, or both. It’s an odd situation given he is also obviously self-deprecating, as noted in the example posted by Novelty Bobble.
It’s a shame because I’ve always enjoyed his TV work, and in particular he does obviously know a lot about cars (as well as other subjects such as history), but he has done things like this so many times now I can no longer make any excuses for him.
They don’t need any income. Harry is independently wealthy in the range of tens of millions of pounds. I don’t know what Markle made as a co-star on Suits, certainly not that kind of money, but still a nice income over the seasons. She didn’t go from shopping at JCPenny to riches, rather shops on Rodeo Drive.
I don’t think that two wheeled contraption was even invented back then, Did you mean segue?
I’m against monarchy on principle. The chance that I will see any of the European royal courts abolished in my lifetime is approaching zero at an alarming speed.
And the reason is that they’ve managed to stay relevant* is by embracing the modern world of gossip media and reality tv. A hundred years ago, being a divorcee was a no-no. I still think most European families would be very uncomfortable having a commoner, who already has a child, marrying into the dynasty, but being divorced or divorcing has clearly not been an issue since at least the 90’s. And it’s better if some prince/princess marries a commoner who’s already achieved some fame, thus adding more glitter and gloss to the whole she-bang.
*To Brits saying that they’re actually doing a job, well so does the royal family in my country (Sweden), as they do in Spain, Denmark, Norway, Netherlands and Belgium. Maybe even more in those teeny tiny countries where they still wield some actual power: Monaco, San Marino, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein.
But is it really a job that needs doing? And could someone else do the tasks that actually needs doing without inheriting the position? The French and Germans think so and they are lousy with nobility with too much time on their hands.
What is completely true, however, is that he met Kate Moss at a party early in his career as a BBC TV presenter.
Kate: “Who are you?”
Jeremy: “I do Top Gear.”
Kate: “Do you offer a bulk discount?”